by Rachel Caine
But Claire … Claire was still real. Wasn’t she? I couldn’t tell anymore. It was as if I was watching us, not being us. A voyeur in my own body.
Not that that was a bad thing, sometimes, but there were other times when time just seemed to slip sideways, and the walls seemed to sag, and everything flickered … but it was just the machines in Myrnin’s lab, Claire said. They malfunctioned. She had to fix them. She was in charge of them now. Amelie said she was smarter than Myrnin had ever been. The savior of Morganville.
Wake up! Can’t you see how wrong this is?
Claire and I were married in the church by Father Joe, and Eve and Michael were our maid of honor and best man. Eve wore red, and Michael had on the same tux, and we stood under the flower arch, the same flower arch they’d been married beneath, and when I turned around it seemed like it was the same people, sitting in the same places, wearing the same clothes, and everything was pale and patchwork for a moment and I felt panic tearing at me …
And then Claire took my hand. Her fingers felt cool and gentle, but they stung a little bit, too. She kissed me, and it tasted sweet and salty and it stung, too, like lemon on a cut, but this was Claire and I had to love it, because I loved her. The gold ring with its diamond and rubies winked on her hand, and she was my wife.
My mother’s ring. I can’t have my mother’s ring—it’s gone ….
WAKE UP.
Then the vampires left Morganville. One day they were just … gone. Amelie left a note, saying that she was leaving the town to us and that she trusted us to run it properly. Eve inherited the coffee shop where she’d worked so many years. Michael became a rock star overnight and went on tour, and I never thought to wonder how he was managing that, given the blood drinking and all, much less the sunlight. I was busy, you see. Busy being the new mayor of Morganville. The rule of the Morrell family was over, and Richard owned a used-car lot and Monica worked at a nail salon, until one day she got run over by a bus. Very sad.
You’re making it up, Shane, in your head. You have to wake up now, or it’s too late.
And Claire, my sweet and beautiful Claire, she got pregnant six months after we were married. I only remember parts of that, little parts where I listened to the baby’s heartbeat and saw the sonograms and Claire in labor and crying with joy after all the screaming, and then the weight of my daughter in my arms and her eyes, water-blue eyes wide and staring up at me.
It had a threadbare beauty to it, like an old film, and it kept feeling less and less like my life and more like dreams, dreams that sagged around the edges at the corners of my eyes, dreams that melted and puddled and hid in the shadows.
Because it isn’t real.
Then it was like a jump cut in a movie, no transition. I was walking, and it was raining, just a light, cold mist that beaded up in fine drops on my leather jacket. I was shivering, and I didn’t know why I was out in the rain when the Glass House was right behind me, with its warm lights and Claire smiling from the window with our daughter in her arms. Where was I going? What was I doing? I felt a bubbling sense of panic, and then I turned the corner and stopped, because my father, Frank Collins, was standing there in front of me, and he said, “Hello, son. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
It wasn’t the Frank that had abused me and betrayed me and used me. It was the Frank I never knew, who never existed. A kind man with Frank’s face, and a TV dad’s smile, and eyes the relentless color of water on glass. “Dad,” I said. I didn’t feel all that surprised to see him, which was strange, because he was kind of dead. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Shane. I heard you got married.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you happy?”
I was supposed to be happy. No, I was happy. I was. “Yes,” I said. Pain sheeted through me, just as it did all the time now, red hot and icy cold, stinging and gnawing and grinding.
Something’s eating you.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” he said. “You deserve to be. You’ve made me proud, Shane.”
I was silent for a moment, struggling with that. He didn’t blink. There were tears running down his cheeks, which was weird, because my dad didn’t cry, had never cried, not even when my sister, Alyssa, died.
It was as if his face were melting.
“You’re dead, Dad. And you were never like this.”
“Like what?”
“A real human being,” I said. “You were never proud of me, or at least you never said it. You always wanted more. I was never good enough for you, even before I killed Alyssa.”
“You didn’t kill her.”
“I should have saved her. Same thing. Didn’t you tell me that a million times?”
The tears were ice, and the ice was melting. “I’m sorry if I said that. I didn’t mean it, Shane. I’ve always been proud of you.”
Liar. Liar liar liar liar.
I pushed past that, because as much as I’d always wanted to hear it, always, there was something else bothering me. “But you’re dead.” The Frank Collins that existed in Myrnin’s lab was a cheat, a ghost, a two-dimensional image, a brain in a jar, not this flesh-and-blood person who didn’t even look right. I reached out and shoved his shoulder. He rocked back, real to the touch. “This isn’t you.”
“It’s what you want,” the not-Frank said. “It’s what you always wanted. A father to be proud of you.”
“I want a real life!” It burst out of me in a shout, and I knew it was true, the only true thing in a long time. “Dad, help me.”
“I’ve been trying to help you,” he said. “Wake up, Shane. You can’t get what you want. Isn’t that what I would tell you? You can’t be the hero. You can’t wish the vampires away. You can’t marry the perfect girl and have a perfect little baby and get your dad back alive, and reformed into the model you always wanted. But now you have all that. What would you call that?”
“A fantasy,” I said.
“Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then wake up before it’s too late. ”
His eyes were water, they were full of water, and I felt a surge of blinding terror and nausea. I felt that tingling burn again, all over my skin. Even though I’d turned the corner and I remembered turning it, I could see the Glass House right in front of me. Someone had painted it, and it glowed neon white in the rain, and Claire was looking at me through the window, smiling, holding our baby.
What was our daughter’s name? I should know that. But I didn’t. I didn’t.
Because she doesn’t exist. Wake up!
“Dad—” I looked back. Frank was gone. There was just the sidewalk, and a gray fog, and the rain, rain beating down on my face, beading up on my skin. “If I wake up I’m going to lose them. I can lose everything but them. Dad—” I didn’t want this, but I didn’t want to let it go. I couldn’t. I started to walk back to the house, to Claire, to the baby whose name I hadn’t decided yet, to a future without vampires where I was respected and important and my dad loved me and …
And I knew I couldn’t have that.
Because I’m Shane Collins, and I don’t get those things.
Because that isn’t how my world is.
WAKE UP!
I did.
There was a solid sheet of glass above me, and water beading up on it and dripping down on my face. I was submerged in the water, except for my face. And everything burned.
The water was thick, and turning pink from my blood.
I hadn’t escaped the draug. I’d never escaped at all. Some people see their lives flash before their eyes; I’d flashed forward, to all the things I wouldn’t see, wouldn’t have. I’d escaped into dreams.
I was a prisoner of the draug.
And they were eating me alive.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CLAIRE
“No!” She’d been screaming it until her throat felt bloody, but Myrnin wouldn’t let go of her, and she couldn’t get Eve or Michael to do anything. Eve was huddled in the
front seat, crying; Michael was driving and not looking in the rearview mirror at her. From the glimpses she’d had of his reflection, his face was set like a mask, but there were tears glittering in his eyes. Tears and fury. “No, you can’t leave him there, you can’t!” But that wasn’t what she was really saying. I left him, she was screaming to herself, inside. I left him there. I abandoned Shane and I can’t let that happen. I can’t live with that. I should have stayed.
Myrnin was muttering under his breath, a liquid flow of what she was sure were curse words in a language she couldn’t recognize. Welsh, maybe. He broke off to say, sternly, “That’s enough. You won’t be helping him by all this, will you?”
“You’re not helping him at all!”
He wrapped both arms around her, pinning her helplessly with her back against his chest, and it was like being held in an iron vise. “Hush,” he said softly. “Hush, now. If we go back, we’ll die. All of us. He’s already gone.”
“They have him, you know that, they have him, and they—they—maybe he’s still alive, maybe—”
“He’s dead. There’s nothing to go back for. I’m sorry.”
She screamed then, without words, just a tortured shriek that echoed around the metal box. It sounded like someone else’s voice, someone else’s pain, because no matter how tormented it was it couldn’t even begin to approach how much she hurt.
Claire felt Myrnin’s cold lips brush her cheek, and heard him murmur, “You will never thank me for this, fy annwyl.” And then he moved a hand to her throat and pressed in a specific place, and in seconds, the world tunneled into gray, then black, and she was gone.
She came to again with her head in Eve’s lap.
They were sitting in their makeshift bedroom, the big ballroom with their cast-off clothes and sleeping bags littering the floor, cups of drying coffee sitting on antique tables that had been pushed to the wall. Claire’s head hurt, her throat hurt, and her eyes felt swollen, and for a moment she couldn’t remember why. Eve was silently stroking her hair. Upside down, Eve looked strange. Her eyes were red, and she looked very shaken and sad.
She pulled in a deep breath as she realized Claire was awake. “Michael!”
He was there in a flash beside her, kneeling next to Claire. He took hold of her hands and pulled her up into a hug.
He didn’t say anything. Not a thing.
She didn’t want to remember. Her hands fisted behind his back, her whole body shook with the need not to know. Michael was shaking, too. After a moment, he let go and sat back, avoiding her eyes as he wiped his face with an impatient gesture, but not before she saw the tears.
“He’s not dead,” she said. “He’s not. They took him. I saw them take him.”
“Claire—” Michael slowly shook his head. He looked tired, angry, and … just broken. “Myrnin said he was dead.”
“He’s not.”
It was Eve’s turn to put her arms around her. Unlike Michael, she wasn’t crying now. She’d finished, Claire supposed, and how was that fair, that anybody could ever finish crying? Ever?
“If I believed there was a chance, any chance, I’d already be going,” Eve said. “But, sweetheart, he’s gone.”
Claire shoved her back with a burst of white rage. She jumped to her feet. “Myrnin knocked me out,” she spat. “How long?” They didn’t answer her until she kicked at the limp sleeping bag and yelled it again. “How long?”
“Five minutes, maybe,” Eve whispered. “Claire, don’t. We’re not your enemies—don’t do this …. We love him, too.”
“Not fucking enough, you don’t!” she snapped, and left them there. She was walking first, then running. Nobody tried to stop her. She flew through confusing hallways, reversed course, her heart hammering, and tried three different routes before she saw the room at the end with the vampire guards standing sentry.
They stepped out in front of her, right palms outstretched in a clear no way signal. Claire slowed, but she kept coming. “I need to see Oliver,” she said. “Right now.”
“He’s not available.”
“I need to see him!”
“Stop.”
She didn’t. She wasn’t sure what her plan was, because right now there was nothing inside her but the burning, ripping need to do something … probably fifteen minutes had passed since she’d last seen Shane, and he was still alive, she was sure he was. Something had to be done. Someone had to listen. She locked gazes with the vampire on the right—she knew him, he was one of Amelie’s regular crew, and sometimes she caught him looking, well, not human but approachable.
Not now. His expression had set like concrete, and his light brown eyes were cold. “Turn around,” he said. “Now.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t give up, because Shane wouldn’t have given up on her. He’d have fought like a wildcat, made them put him in a cage or let him go, and she couldn’t do any less for him, could she?
It took about one second for the vampire to reach out, grab her, and carry her back down the hallway. She kicked and screamed but it didn’t do any good, and the fast motion made her dizzy and sick, disoriented, so that when he dumped her off and slammed and locked the door on her she was still too woozy to stand and fight.
Claire screamed and kicked and battered the heavy wooden door with pure adrenalized fury until she collapsed in a gasping, shaking heap next to it.
Then a voice said, “You finished?”
She looked around, surprised, and found she wasn’t the only occupant of this makeshift cell. It had a couple of camp beds in it, some bottled water, and half a box of energy bars sitting on the floor nearby … and a boy she recognized. He was skinny, and he had a mass of greasy dark hair that flopped over his face.
“Jason!” she blurted, and felt an immediate surge of fear. Eve’s brother wasn’t someone she could trust, not even at the best of times, and being locked in a room with him was definitely not the best of times.
He was sitting cross-legged on one of the beds, chewing an energy bar. “I hate being locked up, too,” Jason said, “but screaming at the door won’t get you anywhere, and you’re giving me a headache. So, you got on the wrong side of the vamps, finally. Good for you.”
“What are you doing here?”
He laughed dryly and held out his hands. They were cuffed. “Prison labor,” he said. “They’ve got me loading up shotgun shells. It’s my rest period, which you’re screwing up with all your screaming.”
Claire knelt down to examine the lock on the door (new, and good) and then the hinges (located on the outside of the door, not the inside). Then she started looking around the room. No windows, like most of the rooms in this vampire shrine. Nothing but four walls, carpet, paneling, and the few things provided for comfort.
Her gaze fixed on Jason. “What do you have?” she asked him. Myrnin, or someone, had searched her and there was nothing left now in her own jeans pockets but lint.
“Not a damn thing,” Jason said. “Why, you gonna search me?” He laughed. “Shane’s gonna get a real kink in his tail over that.”
“Shane’s in trouble,” Claire said, “and I swear to God that if you don’t help me, I’ll break your finger off and use the bone to pick the lock.”
Jason stopped laughing and gave her a long, odd look. “You’re kind of serious,” he said. “Huh. That’s dark, for you.”
“Shut up and help.”
“Can’t. I got my own ass to save here. I do anything off-limits, like touching that door, and I end up bags of blood in a refrigerator, if I’m lucky. Sentence of death, remember?” He rattled his handcuffs for effect. “I’m working out my appeal.”
Claire ignored him. Think. Think! She tried, but there wasn’t much to work with. Water. Plastic bottles. A box of energy bars that came in crinkly metallic wrappers …
She lunged for those, stripped the wrapper loose from a bar, and began folding it in careful, precise movements.
“I’m all for hobbies, but you think this is the time for
origami? Whatcha making, a crane?”
Claire made a thin metallic probe. It was too flexible to serve as a lock pick, but she searched the baseboards. One good thing about modern life—you were never far from an electrical outlet.
She shoved one end of her probe into one of the flat sides of the plug, then bent it and jammed the other end of the U into the plug’s other side, completing the circuit. Getting shocked was inevitable, and she gritted her teeth and took the pain; it wouldn’t kill her. She’d been shocked plenty of times on things in Myrnin’s lab.
She tore a piece from the cardboard box the energy bars had come in, and held it to the metallic strip. It started to smolder, then smoke, and then a thin edge of flame licked at the paper. Claire grinned without amusement and held the burning cardboard up to the rest of the box. Once that was burning, she dropped it on the carpet, which—flame-retardant or not—rapidly began smoking and melting.
The fire alarm went off.
“Holy shit,” Jason said. “You are crazy.”
Vampires took fire seriously; it was something that would kill them, quickly, and every building in Founder’s Square was equipped with massive fire detection systems.
The smoke was rising, and acrid, and Claire coughed involuntarily, then coughed again. The stench was bad. The plug sparked and a thin thread of fire ran up the wall.
“Put it out,” Jason said, no longer even a little amused. When she didn’t, he grabbed a blanket and flung it over the burning carpet, stamping hard just as the alarms went off with a fierce shrilling sound. Greasy smoke billowed up, sending them both into a hacking fit, and now the wall was on fire, really, and Claire felt an awful surge of destructive joy as the door rattled and a guard stepped in with a fire extinguisher. He assessed the situation instantly, disregarded the two of them, and went to the wall to spray it with foam.
Claire broke for the open door. She didn’t realize until she’d gained the hall that Jason hadn’t followed her; when she glanced back, he was standing right where he’d been, facing the open doorway.
